Activity Theory round up

Kaptelinin et al. (1999) give synoptic definitions of what Activity theory is and how it can be applied. In common with Disruptive Technology and Disruptive Innovation (1997, 2003), Activity theory is not predictive (1999, p. 28).

Kaptelinin et al. assert the dynamic role of tools in activity systems, as tools acquire usage through meaning ,and influence the thought and conduct of users:   ‘… a tool comes fully into being when it is used and… knowing how to use it is a crucial part of the tool. So, the use of tools is an evolutionary accumulation and transmission of social knowledge, which influences the nature of not only external behaviour but also the mental functioning of individuals’ (p.32).

Moreover, as meaning evolves from usage it is relevant to observe usage over time and thus observe the construction of meaning within an activity system; ‘It is important to understand how tools are not used in a single instant of trying them out in a laboratory (for example) but as usage unfolds over time. In that time, development may occur making the tool more useful and efficient than might be seen in a single observation’ (1999, p. 32). 

Whitworth (2005) argues that ‘Conflict within organisations is inevitable, but without conflict there would be no creativity, and hence no innovation’ (p. 690). However, Benson and Whitworth (2007) challenge an understanding of activity systems, namely that all contradictions therein need to be removed. Instead, they argue, ‘… tensions within activity systems are not inherently divisive… “best practice” may entail understanding the tensions within activity systems, rather than believing them to be troublesome variables, better eradicated’ (2007, p.79). Subsequently, Benson et al. (2008) draw attention to nodes within Engestrom’s (1987) representation of the activity system, arguing that ‘Rules, roles and tools are as much the territory of centralised economic and political forces as they are for learning and teaching’ (2008, p.466).  Hence, activity systems are not hermetic, as individual nodes within the activity system are shaped by wider economic, political and social factors.

 

References

Benson, A. D., and Whitworth, A. (2007) ‘Technology at the planning table: Activity theory, negotiation and course management systems,’ Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social Change, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 75-92.

 

Benson, A., Lawler, C. And Whitworth, A. (2008) ‘Rules, roles and tools: Activity theory and the comparative study of e-learning,’ British journal of Educational Technology, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 456-467.

 

Christensen, C. M. (1997) The innovator’s dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail, Boston, Mass., Harvard Business School Press.

 

Christensen, C. M. and Raynor, M. E. (2003) The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press.

 

Kaptelinin, V., Nardi, B., and Macaulay, C. (1999) ‘the Activity Checklist: A Tool for Representing the “Space” of Context,’ Interaction, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 27-39.

 

Whitworth, A. (2005) ‘Colloqium’ British Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 685-691.

Engestrom et al. (1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory (3)

People working in education in the UK can get taken aback by the continuities between education in 2011, and education as it took shape in the context of the Education Act of 1870, which made education compulsory for children aged 5 to 13. 

The essential, if unstated, purpose of the Act was to prepare children to function as adults in an industrial economy. Hence there was a time to arrive at school, a time to depart, a clear focus of authority in the classroom with all the students facing the same way, and sanctions (brutal, in general) for anyone deviating from the norms. Consequently, children entered industrial production with a clear sense of the expectations held of them. Their personal or class collective contributions to the development of industry, society and culture were not sought.

Mietinnen’s chapter identifies key features of present day learning and teaching: ‘School learning is characterized by memorization and reproduction of school texts. It is accompanied by an instrumental motivation of school success that tends to eliminate substantive interest in the phenomena and knowledge to be studied. The fundamental problem is that knowledge learned in such a way is difficult to use and apply in life outside the school’ (p. 325). School learning still appears to be modeled on the economic and political needs of an industrial society, yet the external contexts have changed, which makes school learning more irrelevant to the world outside school than it ever has been.

Miettinnen uses the language of Activity Theory to identify a particular problem with school learning: ‘the most important artifact of the school institution: decontextualized, independent text’ (p. 326). Online technologies offer a different artifact and, possibly, enhanced relevance to learning.  

At present, the disconnect between the structure of school learning and the wider social structure results in, ‘the historical isolation of school from other societal activities… Passive reception and memorization produce the paradoxical combination of slavish dependence on books and a real inability to use them.’ (p. 326).

The structure of school learning conjures up images of a monorail, with a point of departure, a point of arrival and no opportunity for deviation. Hence we have, ‘the unique inertia and conformity of classroom teaching and interaction… Teacher talk dominates, and students’ activity is largely limited to answering questions formulated by the teacher’ (p. 327). Furthermore, the structure of school learning bleaches communication of its power to create and enhance valuable learning: ‘In ordinary oral language, questions are used to request information and action. In schools, questions are asked to which the teacher already knows the answers’ (p. 329).  

Hence, when students arrive at university and are expected to take more responsibility for their own learning, they may understand what a deadline is, and its importance, but they may not understand how to construct knowledge, understanding and meaning for themselves, as they are successful graduates of a system that encourages the reproduction of what is already held to be known. Positing technology as learning ‘s saviour is reductive, but at least technology can comprise a clear link between the world of the classroom, and the world outside. Therefore, by positioning technology as the artifefact (tool), educators can change the other nodes in the Activity System, and thus change learning for the better.

Reference

Miettinen, R. (1999) ‘Transcending traditional school learning: Teachers’ work and networks of learning,’ in Y. Engestrom, R. Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds.) Perspectives on Activity Theory, Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, pp. 325-346.

Engestrom et al. (1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory (2)

Further notes on Engestrom, Y., Miettinen, R.  and Punamaki, R. L. eds. (1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory,Cambridge,CambridgeUniversity Press.

Brostrom (1999) writes, ‘In play activity children very often go beyond the current contextual frame. Children not only appropriate the social surrounding world, they also make unexpected creative changes. Observations of play in preschools indicate that children not only adopt [sic] to and internalize the local institutional culture but expand beyond it as well. Through this activity new knowledge, skills, and actions often appear’ (p. 251). It would be interesting to substitute ‘people’ for ‘children’ in this passage, as creativity can emerge from seemingly aimless activity undertaken by children or adults. New knowledge and understanding can occur serendipitously, or when boundaries are weakened or removed. Therefore, while Activity Theory relates to activity that is purposeful, the process and development of play suggests that Expansive Learning (Engestrom 1987, 2001) can happen, and may happen more easily, without goal-directed action. As Hakkarainen (1999) notes, ‘There is no necessity to produce any concrete results or attain previously formulated goals in play’ (p. 234). The products of play, because they are not pre-figured, can be new, and revelatory,

Brostrom also writes, ‘If the teachers make room for children’s creative activities, they themselves will generate such expanding elements. The opposite will occur if the teachers put too much structure into the play. Expansive play will not appear’ (p. 261). Again, we can apply this to learning generally, rather than to the learning of children in particular. Expansive Learning requires an appropriate environment in which to flourish. The more learning is controlled, the fewer the outlets for creativity, though it is unlikely that it could ever be suppressed entirely.

Lompscher (1999) follows Brostrom’s analysis by summarising conventional learning: ‘in most classrooms students are objects of didactic actions aimed at the transmission of knowledge and skills (and norms and values, as well) from the teacher’s head (or from the textbook) to the pupils’ heads’ (p. 266). Conventional learning, therefore, obstructs creativity. By giving learners (and workers) more creative opportunities, educational institutions and workplaces create more opportunities for the creation of new knowledge and understanding. The implications for this approach, as far as Activity Theory is concerned, is that it challenges the role of the ‘Object’ node, and may encourage a new configuration of the structure.

References

Brostrom, S. (1999) ‘Drama games with 6-year-old children: Possibilities and limitations,’ in Y. Engestrom, R. Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds.) Perspectives on Activity Theory,Cambridge,CambridgeUniversity Press.

Engeström, Y. (1987) Learning by expanding: an activity-theoretical approach to developmental research.Helsinki, Orienta-Konsultit Oy. http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/Engestrom/expanding/toc.htm (accessed 8 July 2011).

Engestrom, Y. (2001) ‘Expansive Learning at Work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization,’ Journal of Education and Work, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 133-156.

Hakkarainen, P. (1999) ‘Play and motivation,’ in Y. Engestrom, R. Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds.) Perspectives on Activity Theory,Cambridge,CambridgeUniversity Press.

Lompscher, J. (1999) ‘Activity formation as an alternative strategy of instruction’ ’ in Y. Engestrom, R. Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds.) Perspectives on Activity Theory,Cambridge,CambridgeUniversity Press.

Literature round-up

Awaiting the reports on the pilot study, I’m catching up on reading. I’m also preparing my paper for the European Conference on E-Learning.

The subject node in an activity system is particularly problematic because contradiction can be inscribed within it. If there is a gap between the subject’s use value, the functional value of what they produce, and the subject’s exchange value, the wealth their labour creates for their employer (which exceeds the subject’s rewards for their labour), then some contradiction is created for the subject. Daniels and Warmington (2007) argue the subject node in the activity system is under-theorised, as the system takes insufficient account of the relations within and between subjects.

Part of education’s function is shaped by the economic and political context within which education occurs. Hence, for example, the Education Act of 1870 existed primarily to make UK subjects functioning units within a fully-fledged industrial economy (regulated hours of attendance, regulated conduct within the institution, punishment for transgression). Rikowski (2002) argues, ‘General education… nurtures those attitudes and personality traits pertinent to working in capitalist enterprises in general’ (p. 20).

Activity Theory presupposes that activity is purposeful. There is no activity system without an object. Engestrom and Kerosuo (2007) argue that Activity Theory ‘is strongly committed to pedagogical and interventionist actions to facilitate and change learning’ (p.337). Hence, as a practical approach to learning it is not about waiting for change to happen via the internal pressures of contradictions, but, instead, provoking change through an analysis of activity systems and the contradictions between their various nodes.

Activity Theory argues that human activity is mediated through tools, a term broadly defined to include signs and codes as well as physical artefacts. However, and as with subjects, the tools node is complex, as Engestrom and Blackler (2005) argue (using objects to signify tools, not objects to signify outcomes): ‘First, it would be a mistake to assume that objects are “just given”; objects are constructed by actors…. Second, at the same time it would also be a mistake to assume that objects are constructed arbitrarily on the spot; objects have histories and built-in affordances, they resist and “bite back”’ (p. 310). On the one hand, meanings for objects (tools) are constructed by users through usage, but on the other hand objects have a back-story created by their previous uses, which are likely to exert an influence on how they are used subsequently. Using an object in an unfamiliar way can provoke resistance.

A significant value and potential of Activity Theory is that it can expose contradictions in existing human activity, and posit alternatives. In this sense it is empowering, and can, potentially, resolve contradictions experienced within subjects. Rikowski (2002), placing his analysis within an explicitly political context, defines Marxism as a ‘promethean scream: we are everything, there are no gods, no superhuman forces. People are the sole creators, it is labour alone which constitutes social reality’ (p. 1).

References
Daniels, H. and Warmington, P. (2007) ‘Analysing third generation activity systems: labour-power, subject position and personal transformation,’ Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 19, no. 6, pp. 377-391.

Engestrom, Y. and Blackler, F. (2005) ‘On the life of the object,’ Organization, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 307-330.

Engestrom, Y. and Kerosuo, H. (2007) ‘From workplace learning to inter-organizational learning and back: the contribution of activity theory,’ Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 19, no. 6, pp.336-352.

Rikowski, G. (2002) ‘Methods for researching the social production of labour power in capitalism,’ University College Northampton School of Education research seminar, 7 March 2002.

Lave (1996) ‘Teaching, as Learning, in Practice’

Lave starts with a question: ‘Why pursue a social rather than a more familiar psychological theory of learning?’ Her answer is lucid: ‘theories that reduce learning to individual mental capacity/activity in the last instance blame marginalized people for being marginal.’ Her research is therefore driven by a wider social concern: ‘it seems imperative to explore ways of understanding learning that do not naturalize and underwrite divisions of social inequality in our society’ (p. 149).

Lave’s repudiation of didactic, knowledge transfer understandings of learning is similarly direct: ‘learning transfer is an extraordinarily narrow and barren account of how knowledgeable persons make their way among multiply interrelated settings’ (p. 151). Effective learning is active, not passive. Learning transfer does not replicate experience, in which individuals have to negotiate situations actively; processing, reflecting and acting, often at speed.

In some respects, Lave’s views are the same as when she collaborated with Etienne Wenger (1991). She still sees learning as something inevitable: ‘Whenever people engage for substantial periods of time, day by day, in doing things in which their ongoing activities are interdependent, learning is part of their changing participation in changing practices’ (p. 150). In addition, she returns to a community of practice she (and Wenger) analysed in their 1991 book, when she describes Liberian tailors, and the effectiveness of the learning community: ‘Eighty-five percent or more who started as tailors’ apprentices finished, and continued their practice as tailors’ (p. 154). Many H.E.I.s would envy such a retention rate, though the article does not explore the paucity of other life choices available to the apprentice tailors, which may determine the retention rate.

Lave’s insistence that learning is social prompts a fundamental re-examination of learning itself: ‘What would happen if we stopped reifying learning and began to think of learning as something historically specific?’ (p. 155). She criticises ‘the incredibly narrow, pervasive history of philosophical and later psychological treatments of “learning” as wholly an epistemological problem – it was all about knowing, acquiring knowledge, beliefs, skills, changing the mind… and that was all’ (p. 156). Learning for Lave is shaped overwhelmingly by the historical and social context within which it occurs.

Lave is also critical of educational research, and of a reductive conflation: ‘A close reading of research on how to improve learning shows that questions about learning are almost always met by educational researchers with investigations of teaching. This disastrous shortcut equates learning with teaching’ (p. 158). Her own analysis sees learning and teaching as two distinct phenomena which interrelate, but do not reproduce each other.

Lave’s direct style reminds us that learning is something that people do, whereas teaching is something that societies construct. Furthermore, regarding learning as an individual, psychological process is reductive and misleading, as learning is shaped by its social, historical and economic contexts. In addition, equating learning unproblematiclly with teaching is, paradoxically, problematic, as each has its own discrete conditions. Maybe learning and teaching are at their most effective when the two practices recognise each other as distinct, and then strive to find common ground, thereby aligning them more closely as practices in reality than traditional learning theories and pedagogies allow.

References

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Lave, J. (1996) ‘Teaching, as Learning, in Practice’ Mind, Culture and Activity, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 149–164.

‘Becoming individual in education and cyberspace’ (2004)

Krejsler advocates project work for assessment: ‘the purpose of the project is to build up knowledge about the phenomenon investigated and to mediate that knowledge to others to whom it might be useful. A further purpose may be to take action on a knowledge-based background’ (p. 490). In the digital age, an online space (a blog, for example) comprises a canvas on which a range of project activities can be undertaken.

Building on the work of Foucault, Krejsler sees institutional learning as confined by a distinct hierarchy and values: ‘populations are made into useful individuals in various institutions that operate according to similar principles no matter whether we talk about prisons, schools, factories or nucleus families. Each institution represents an enclosure that subjects individuals to specific criteria for entry into and exit out of the enclosure’ (p. 492). The Community of Practice theory is interested in the subject’s movement from entry to exit, but less interested in entry and exit criteria. Krejsler imbues the community with sinister undertones, as its boundaries become associated with containment and constraint.

Krejsler argues we are in a post-Industrial age in which the structure of our institutions has changed: ‘Culture, marketing and service that respond sensitively to the whims of fashion and markets in a globalized economy with a high-speed turnover increasingly replace the production of basic goods, which moves to the Third World. The job market is no longer stable. One cannot anymore expect long-term steady employment on the basis of a diploma from an authorized educational institution’ (p. 492). Krejsler’s analysis challenges the Community of Practice theory because the community itself becomes unstable and febrile; individuals cannot rely on continued membership of the community, as the community’s terms of membership may shift. This was not a problem in the original communities of practice (eg, Yucatan midwives, West African tailors) studied by Lave and Wenger (1991). As Krejsler argues, ‘Enclosure within the disciplinary institution is replaced by individualized anxiety. It is expected that one can constantly market one’s competencies so that they match at any given time the volatile needs of the job market. One is constantly und pressure to convince one’s employers that one is indispensable’ (p. 493).

Krejsler cites Deleuze (1990), who ‘distinguishes between the individual, who has an indivisible identity within a certain enclosure, and the dividual, who is under constant pressure to simultaneously divide his/her attention between several different projects, environments, and relations’ (p. 494). Individuals have multiple personae for different institutional contexts and, in the twenty-first century, these personae are digitised.

Krejsler suggests learning in the digital age can threaten institutions: ‘Learning that is organized in accordance with military principles of hierarchy, obedience and discipline increasingly dissipates into more volatile forms. Computers and the internet threaten to distribute knowledge and learning from the authorized enclosures of school to a virtual ubiquitous space’ (p. 495). Furthermore, the digital age learner has a new set of resources: ‘When access to the Internet, chat rooms and e-mail is part of project work, the student is constantly subject to the temptation to surf out into spaces that genuinely interest and excite him/her’ (p. 497). Therefore, Krejsler argues, the institution cannot be assured of full control over learning.

Kejsler’s analysis is frequently dystopian, yet he accurately describes classroom encounters, and the power relations that underpin them. Describing the teacher responding to off-message behaviour by the student, ‘he/she applies the tactics of the lifted eyebrows at first, seasoned, if necessary, with joking or slightly ironic comments. This should make the students aware that they are leaving the path of the virtuous.’ Next, ‘The teacher, being trained as an expert in communication, here asks the students to explain how their work proceeds, whether something blocks their learning or whether they are inadvertently being led astray from the formulated goals of their project. The students decode the situation and the futility of taking recourse to any other outlet than confessing that they are astray. They therefore express that they have already realized their wrongdoing and are rapidly returning to what they are expected to do. The teacher wraps up his/her absolution in informal and joking language. Employing an inescapable logic of reason, however, he/she leaves no doubt about what is expected of the students’ (p. 498).

Most people could recognise teacher behaviour along these lines. However, Krejsler argues that what he calls a ‘logbook’ (‘blog’ is better suited to the digital age) ‘makes us enter a foggy area where it becomes difficult to distinguish private from public matters, where the role of the student gets thoroughly intertwined with the role of the private person… [enabling] the student to enter spaces of reflection and wondering resembling the diary as a point of departure for challenging dialogues’ (pp. 498-99). A log, digital or otherwise, allows personal factors, including emotions, to be brought into institutional learning contexts in which emotions have not always been welcomed.

Having conducted a gloomy analysis, Krejsler concludes with a more uplifting quote from Morss (2000, p. 196): ‘learning can be an eventfulness whereby the teacher is not “empowering” students (as though power were something in the students’ future), but where their learning is already an expression of their own power, energy and joy.’

Krejsler’s focus is on how knowledge is managed and controlled in institutional settings. He does not mention Communites of Practice but it applies, because he is interested in entry and exit criteria for institutions/communities, and what people have to accomplish to meet the criteria. He does not examine, however, the nature of knowledge itself. Knowledge is not stable, and its effects are not predictable. The subversive potential of knowledge is intrinsic to knowledge; the educator may have a clear sense of what values they wish to convey, but students may form their own interpretation of the information in front of them, even if they have to suppress their own insights in an institutional setting, for their own good. For example, a teacher may tell students that Lear is mad when he says, ‘Plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. Arm it in rags, a pygymy’s straw doth pierce it,’ but the student may yet interpret the statement as saying the rich and powerful get away with it, and the poor get screwed. That could be a useful insight.

References

Deleuze, G. (1990) Postscript on the societies of control, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Krejsler, J. (2004) ‘Becoming individual in education and cyberspace’ Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, vol. 10. no. 5, pp. 489-503.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Morss, J. R. (2000) ‘The passional pedagogy of Giles Deleuze,’ Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 185-200.

Reflections on an EdD study week-end

The highlights: meeting my supervisor, anticipating the highs and lows ahead, wondering whether having been a research student in the 90s will comprise an advantage, concluding that it probably won’t.

 A really good conversation with one of the OU people about what ‘democratic values’ means in the context of ethical research. A parliamentary democracy can invade an oil-rich nation. A parliamentary democracy can land commandos on a ship carrying aid. If I practise comparably aggressive methods in my research, am I being ethical? If not, why not? It seems to me that democratic values can mean whatever the powerful want them to mean.

 Getting a really interesting book on Communities of Practice, critically challenging the whole idea. It may shake or cement my views; either is good.

 The less than highlights: not being a natural networker, keeping that frozen smile on hold was a big ask.

 Eating way way too much. Henceforth I will be known as Sir Loin of Pork.

 Rushing back on Sunday to see England play Germany. Call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s best to have a defence, midfield and attack, rather than 11 clueless Herberts running randomly and pointing a lot.

 The security guy at the library who wouldn’t let me in at 11:57 because the library doesn’t open til 12. No further comment needed.

 And next – sorting out my research methods. What do I do, apart from conduct interviews? I don’t want to add another level of data gathering just for the sake of doing it. But there may be a gap between how people tell me they use technologies for learning, and how they actually use them. That gap seems big right now.

 Overall – very glad I met my supervisor (Daisy) and spent several hours discussing the research with her. Very glad I attended the workshop on transcribing interviews (her suggestion). Very glad I met a very nice Labrador on the way to the library.

 Could the event have been half a day shorter? Maybe, but churls like me never wholly enter the spirit of these things.

 Final thought. The perennial anxiety of research as an isolating experience. That’s the best bit. Some of us were medieval monks in a previous life. Probably.

And stop planning so much

I’ve seen a scary Lesson Plan document given out to people doing teaching qualifications. It has three pages and a whole lot of boxes, with gripping headings like ‘referral notes for action’ (beats me), ‘Health and safety’ (hi-vi waistcoats, presumably, to keep everyone healthy and safe) and ‘Link discussions to previous learning and to individuals’ job roles, teaching subject and previous experiences or interests’ (I’m sure my coat’s here somewhere).

What concerns me is that excessive planning militates against effective learning. Learning should welcome its unexpected twists and turns. Sunstein (2002) talks about unanticipated encounters being a chief source of learning, and we should be wary of learning experiences that are the slaves of aims and outcomes.

On my recently completed MA I had a discussion with fellow learners, in which I argued that I would be happy to abandon the aims and objectives of a class if I felt that it was travelling into really interesting territory. One of the points of learning is to take us somewhere we have never travelled, and if that’s new for the lecturer as well as the students, then so much for the better.

One of my fellow learners was a trainer for the armed forces, and was more in favour of planning. I take his point; if a group of fighter pilots stopped talking about how to drop bombs and started discussing a really interesting piece of crochet, that might be problematic. Mind you, I’d be happy if the world had more crochet and less fighter planes, not least because yarn bombing is exposing the more militantly creative wing of the crochet movement.

My own lesson planning is minimal, and I don’t see how I could adjust to the forms handed out to trainees in the profession now, where a lot of boxes are ticked without effective learning being guaranteed, or even made more likely. It feels like Gradgrindism, or the concomitant of league tables and targets, an educational culture in which we make the measurable things important, instead of making the important things measurable.

Reference
Sunstein, C. R. (2002) ‘MyUniversity.com? Personalized Education & Personalized news’ Educause, vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 33-40.

On finishing a Master’s

I did my first Master’s degree, in English Literature, in the early 1990s. I would like to have invested more time and energy in it, but my lifestyle wasn’t always conducive to study back then.

A few years later I managed to drag my PhD thesis (also in English) over the finish line.

Now, ten years later, I have completed a second Master’s, this time in Online and Distance Education, and it has been transformative. This is due in part to the fact that I’m at a different life stage, but it’s largely due to the fact that I teach and manage in H.E. and so there’s a symbiosis between my learning and professional lives. Quite simply, the best learning has to be relevant to the learner. Most of what I learned at school was utterly useless.

More widely, my work on the Master’s has made me reflect on the nature of learning itself. I like Etienne Wenger’s (1998) argument for centripetal learning, that learners move centripetally from the periphery to the centre of communities. This rings true for many experiences, from work (where training courses are limited, but actual participation in the workplace enculturates us far more effectively) to the experience of being a student at university. However, recent work by Engestrom (2007) challenges Wenger’s analysis by pointing out oppression by dominant figures in communities, and rebellion by apprentices. Therefore, learning is not smoothly and necessarily centripetal. Instead, the movement of learning is shaped by learning’s participants. Those at the hub of the learning experience would appear to exert the greatest influence.

So, for educators, the challenge is to create benign learning communities, in which learners can and want to move to the centre. Therefore, for all that technology and advanced pedagogy can do, learning is fundamentally about relationships and therefore fundamentally about people.

Or, as the old folks say round our way, it’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice.

References
Engeström, Y. (2007) ‘From communities of practice to mycorrhizae’ in Hughes, J., Jewson, N. and Unwin, L. (eds) Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives, London, Routledge.
Wenger, Etienne (1998, repr. 2005), Communities of Practice, Cambridge , Cambridge University Press.

Stop learning and do something else instead

Facing the last lap of this MA, I’m putting my final, 6,000 word piece of work away for a few days.

Setting work aside for a while is recognised as a good thing. Certainly, from an editing point of view, setting the work aside allows you to return to it with fresh eyes and see all its faults.

The other thing that has passed into received wisdom is that, while the work sits there unmolested, the unconscious works on the material. This seems to ring true in the sense that most of us recognise this kind of experience. When we say ‘I just thought of that,’ it might be more accurate to say ‘I just stopped thinking of it.’ But when we say that putting work aside for a few days allows the unconscious to work on it (as I have said in academic writing courses I have written) we usually don’t know what we are talking about. Most of us haven’t benefited from training in psychology or psychoanalysis.

I’m not sure this matters, as long as it works. But if setting a subject aside is a good way to allow thought to ferment, should we start building digressive activities into the courses we write? Do we need ‘Google Time’ in learning, the opportunity to just create; for example a fifteen minute slot in the middle of a workshop to talk about latest films watched, books read, websites discovered, games played?

I’m currently doing a lot of tutor observations, and I encourage tutors to play around with media, to mix things up so it’s not just the tutor talking. But maybe we should mix things up further and spend 10-20 minutes just doing something because it’s fun to do it, and then return to the matter in hand. If we give thought time to think then we may see the benefit.